A Girl Named Disaster (ORR 2)

Title: A Girl Named Disaster

Author: Nancy Farmer

Genre: Historic Fiction

During the last week, I have continued reading the book A Girl Named Disaster, which talks about a Shona girl, Nhamo, living in an African village around the 80s. In the 60 pages that I read this week, Nhamo, and her Ambuya (Grandmother), Uncle, Aunt and cousin go the trading post far from their village to find a muvuki after cholera struck their village and killed many people. A muvuki is a medical specialist who deals with causes of death, and he can also detect witches, which is what the villagers think brought the illness and misery upon them. On their way to the trading post, everyone is given zangos (charms to protect them from witches), except Nhamo, which gets her to believe that her family members might think that she is the witch.

Once they arrive at the trading post, Nhamo sees a lot of things she hasn't been able to see before, including a radio and a guitar. While they are at the post, Nhamo finds out that her father left her and her mother because he got drunk and killed someone. She finds this out from her Grandmother, who started told all of this to a Portugese trader, while Nhamo was nearby listening.

After a few weeks, they finally go to the muvuki, who tells them that the spirit of Gore Mtoko (the man Nhamo's father killed) is the one causing all the pain, masked as a leopard who killed Runako, Nhamo's mother. In order for the agony to stop, the villagers need to marry Nhamo to Gore's brother, and name their first son after him. However, Grandmother is horrified at the idea, as Gore's brother is a horrible man, so she gets into a fierce argument with the muvuki, after which she has a stroke. Nhamo and the kind Portugese trader, Joao, and his wife, Rosa, take care of Ambuya until she is well enough to go to travel to their village. Once Ambuya recovers, Joao and Rosa ask Nhamo to stay and live with them, become their daughter, since their own died of cholera. However, Uncle Kufa is against it, and is determined to give Nhamo to Gore's brother. That is why all of them leave the trader and his wife, and go back to the village, to prepare for the Nhamo's marriage to Zororo (Gore's brother).

Once Ambuya recovered, and was able to speak again, she called Nhamo into her hut on the day of her marriage to tell her that Nhamo could be a Catholic girl, because her mother might have converted before she married her father. Ambuya also told Nhamo that she needs to run away to Zimbabwe and seek help from the Catholic people there. So, during the night, Nhamo escapes to Zimbabwe, following a river, to the lake Cabora Bassa, and to her freedom.
So far, the one thing I liked the best about this book was the way that the author talks about the culture of Shona people, as well as what are their values in society, and the geography of the area. The descriptions of the trading post and the jungle were also very good, and the reader can clearly picture an image in their head.